The Wrens: Noise Pop 2004

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Traveling the long and ragged road.

By David Adams

"She sends kisses," he sings, and the house is moving with him, and the house is moved. This is the thing about The Wrens: at the end of a music festival that, despite plenty of good tunes, is largely imbued with mid-20s hipster irony and cred gained by disaffected pretense, the big bang is a burst of sincerity from four rockin' 30-somethings.

It's a sunny Saturday afternoon at Bottom of the Hill, the venue sparsely populated enough--and the sunlight plentiful enough--that my friend and I can move about freely, beers in hand, to take in the scene. Maybe it's giddiness from too little sleep, or maybe it's the pleasure of seeing a band in the middle of the day, rather than after standing for two hours on the lower back-destroying wooden floor of other venues, but the air for me is bright and hopeful. The rest of the crowd seems just as excited. And why not? This is, after all, The Wrens show at last: one of the hottest tickets at this year's Noisepop.

That level of excitement wouldn't have been believable even two years ago, when The Wrens were still struggling with a seven-year hiatus, due largely to record label woes--deals falling through, misaligned attitudes, and pressure to contort their sound into something guaranteed to be a hit (this last coming from Grass, which eventually became Wind-Up Records, the ones to blame for the hugely popular Creed). Though they'd released two records in the early 90s, Silver and the well-received Seacaucus, the New Jersey foursome had never gained a wide audience, even in alternative and indie circles. "We've been to Bottom of the Hill twice before," mentions the guitarist at one point during today's set. "And both times, nobody was here."

Not so today. By the time the opening acts have finished and The Wrens are setting up, the relatively small club is packed. It's a strong contrast not lost on the band, who comment several times on how great it is to play to such a crowd. Our enthusiasm obviously affects them, because their playing is not only lively, but downright ecstatic, making even their most heartbroken songs burst with barely-contained joy. It's a surprising, and surprisingly moving, sincerity for Noisepop, and thankfully, everyone is in the same vibe. That's part of what's so special about The Wrens. These guys, world-weary and seasoned, having played together now for 14 years, are sending out more pure rock energy than most any band of aloof 20-somethings will manage in their entire careers.

In the best sense, The Wrens don't sound their age. That's not to say their veteran status, however obscure they've been until recently, doesn't imbue their songs with plenty of maturity -- the lyrics are rife with the taste of growing older, with how much life can kick you around in 14 years. But at first blush, these pop-soaked, sometimes punkish songs have a much younger sound, especially in the choruses. At times, The Wrens play off the sounds of the latest emo-brat bands being used as a stand-in for "rock programming" on MTV. But maybe that's just another way of saying that The Wrens haven't erased accessibility from their songs. Still, none of these pieces are simple, and more often than not, The Wrens take what they wish from grunge, indie, and emo conventions and reshape them into sophisticated, emotionally jagged gems.

Most of today's set comes from The Meadowlands, last year's critically adored "comeback" record. The album is an unassuming masterpiece of weary stories, lovesick anthems, and ragged sing-alongs whose mature perspective makes Death Cab for Cutie's ostensibly similar recent record seem like so much adolescent whimpering. The sound on stage is obviously much rawer than the careful progression we get on the album, but The Wrens still take time for the quiet, keyboard-driven builds which lead many songs into their climactic chorus. "Happy" and "She Sends Kisses" are multi-part mini-suites; maybe not as overtly ambitious as Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," but perhaps stronger for their subtlety. A few other songs -- "Faster Gun," the crowd favorite "This Boy Is Exhausted," and a crazy jazz-piano punk freak jam -- are out-and-out rockers. In all cases, it's obvious that these guys' long tenure together pays off, because their playing is wonderfully tight and cohesive. The music shimmers and crackles. The audience is obviously having a great time, but even better, so is the band.

The set flies by. One delicious song leads to another, we're jumping up and down, we're banging our heads, we're clapping and laughing. The band stops to laugh with us, to compliment the crowd, to thank the woman at their soundboard, to thank good luck in general. When they leave the stage, we only have a few moments to clamor for an encore before they're hopping back on. "It's always a little silly," the guitarist says, "going off-stage like that. It's not like we were even going anywhere, so we decided to just come back up and get on with it." Hell yes. Their encore is too short -- two more songs hardly satisfy the Wrens-crazed audience. But when the band says their final goodbye for the afternoon, it's clear they're just as happy to see us after all these years, and I get the feeling they didn't want the music to have to end, either.